


Like Tears in the Rain

by madmorr



Category: Euphoria (TV 2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 20:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20588918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmorr/pseuds/madmorr
Summary: After the train pulls away, Rue is forced to confront her emotions while Jules contemplates their relationship.





	Like Tears in the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to god Sam Levinson wrote Rules based on the song [Sordid Affair by Royksopp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8JhkiWR114) and I made a [fanvid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OnWWaPVVrQ&frags=pl%2Cwn) to prove it but I’ll leave that big ‘ol rant for the endnotes.
> 
> This fic was also inspired by [this moment](https://youtu.be/NZv1Gc9DleY?t=1042) from that one press conference: 
> 
> Zendaya: “There’s moments of feeling—I think all young people feel this way, maybe people in general feel this way—of feeling lost and feeling like there’s just so much shit that you just feel like it’s just too much shit and it’s helpless. Like why do i even try, y’know? Um, so there’s that feeling, but then there’s moments of hope and there’s moments of beauty within those things and that’s what I think this show does so well is that it explores the dark but there’s also hints and moments of light and hope where you see it and you wanna hold onto it, and then it’s gone. And then you find it again, and then it’s gone. And that’s kind of how life works, y’know?” 
> 
> Hunter: “Amen."

Rue twisted her arms together in front of her body as she walked home alone from the train station. She had to hold them like that, otherwise she might fall into pieces and never make it home and then her mom and Gia would worry. Granted, if they saw her choking back sobs, the way she was right now, that would worry them too. 

Thankfully, the house was dark when she arrived. Her mom was no doubt still awake, listening for her return, but she would assume Jules was with her and not get up to check on her. 

Once safely in her room, Rue clawed desperately at her clothes to get them off, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the floor and impatiently yanked a t-shirt over her head. Then she proceeded to tear her room apart looking for it, which, considering her room had already looked like a bomb hit it, was quite a feat. She’d had it at school today, it had to be here. The panic began to rise in her chest, but then she remembered. It was at Jules’ house. She thought for a wild moment about going back there and sneaking in to retrieve it but the thought of entering Jules’ room and not finding her there was unbearable. 

Besides, any comfort the red sweatshirt might provide wouldn’t be enough to calm the storm inside her now. Automatically, her brain began assessing her options and, without her permission, her body started going through the motions of searching for a high. 

First stop was her dresser drawer, back left hand corner. Her fingertips felt for a small plastic bag, a loose pill, anything, but encountered nothing. Next was the shoebox in her closet. With shaking hands, she unceremoniously dumped its contents onto the floor and pawed through the pile of useless trinkets. No drugs. 

Her backpack had to have something. She unzipped the pockets, turned it upside down, and shook it, unbothered by the mess of papers and books that tumbled out. No luck. 

She decided to check the dresser again. Was it so inconceivable that, during one of the many times she had quickly tucked away a stash of drugs there, a pill had slipped out of a plastic bag and gotten lost in the mess of clothes that provided its hiding place? She removed each piece of clothing in the drawer. Nothing. 

Maybe she hadn’t looked carefully enough through the items from the shoe box. She combed through them again to be sure. 

Had she unzipped all the pockets in her backpack?

Drawer, closet, backpack. Drawer, closet, backpack. Drawer, closet, backpack. 

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

The emotion was beginning to overwhelm her.

There was another box in her closet. She knew for a fact she had never stashed drugs in that box before. But what if one day, in a rush she’d mixed up the boxes and tossed a Xanax in the wrong one? What if? What if what if what if what if whatifwhatifwhatifwhatif….

Retrieving the box from the shelf in her closet, Rue brought it back to her bed and set it down carefully. One by one, she removed each precious item: A worn book full of dog-eared pages, a birthday card, a framed photograph, a watch that had long since stopped working, a lightbulb. She hadn’t looked through this box in so long. 

With tears blurring her vision, she wouldn’t be able to spot a pill, even if one did present itself. 

In her desperation, she thought about calling Lexi, then she thought about calling Ali, then she thought about walking down the hall to her mother. But all those options were dead ends. What she really wanted in that moment, more than anything in life, was to talk to her dad. And that was a dead end too. 

Collapsing onto her bed, she succumbed to the grief, letting it wash over her in waves.

— — —

The night he died, her mom had been at work because she had already used all her vacation time and sick leave and if she lost her job, they’d lose the health insurance. Without the insurance, they wouldn’t be able to pay the medical bills. That’s how, a long while after his death, Rue realized that her mom had still been holding onto hope when he died. Maybe if she had given up hope, they could’ve stopped the treatment that made him feel so awful and she wouldn’t have been away at work when he passed. Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt her so much. 

Before experiencing the reality of death, Rue used to think that when someone died, life paused and everyday responsibilities could be put aside. Like in the movies, the whole family would be there, and everyone would get a chance to say their goodbyes. But life stubbornly trudged on in its painfully ordinary way, as if it was mocking their suffering. Rue remember distinctly all the little things that seemed to take every ounce of her energy to do. Why should she tie her shoes if her dad was dying? Why did it matter if she brushed her teeth if her dad was dying? Why the fuck was she trying to learn geometry while her dad was dying? 

Those were the kinds of questions playing in her mind while she sat in bed next to her dad that night. She was working on homework for her English class in the soft glow of the muted TV. Gia lay curled up near the end of the bed, fast asleep, still in her school clothes. Rue felt a little guilty about that. She knew she should wake her up and try to get her into her own bed but she insisted on being wherever Rue was. 

Rue was attempting to bully her brain into coming up with the theme of a book she hadn’t read when her dad’s voice interrupted her.

“Can you turn on the light?” he asked.

Putting her homework aside, Rue quickly turned on the lamp on the bedside table. For the first time in a couple of days, he appeared lucid. Most of the time, even when he was awake, he wasn’t really there.

“Do you want a drink of water?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Need some pain meds?” 

He shook his head again.

She followed his gaze to the frame on the bedside table. It contained a paper with her parent’s wedding vows printed in elegant cursive and a photo of her parents on their wedding day. Rue used to love to look at that photo with her dad’s big goofy smile and cheerful crinkles by his eyes but now it just made her sad.

“Can you read it to me?”

It was the fourth time he had asked for that in the last week. Rue wasn’t sure if it was the drugs making him forgetful, or if he just wanted the comfort of the familiar words. She obliged, and although she didn’t actually need to read it—she knew the words by heart—she picked the frame up and held it, letting her eyes follow the looping letters as she spoke. 

Her dad closed his eyes as he listened. She spoke the last six words of the vows carefully, as if they were delicate, fragile things. 

"My love, my life, my everything.”

Her dad stayed still for a long moment, and Rue had started to wonder if he had fallen back to sleep when he spoke. 

“I meant those words when I said them to your mom,” he said, opening his eyes to look at her. Each syllable seemed to take so much effort for him to get out. “But then you came along, and suddenly you were my everything too. And then Gia, she was a whole new everything.” 

Not knowing what to say, Rue reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. His consciousness was already fading as he fell back to sleep. Rue waited until he was fully asleep before she took a pill from the drawer by the bed and let oblivion claim her too. 

Rue awoke sometime later to a gentle hand softly shaking her. It was her mom, still dressed in her work clothes and her face shining with tears.

“He’s gone,” she told Rue in a shaky voice.

She looked at her dad. He looked like he was still asleep. She looked at the line on the monitor, which usually curved in a steady pattern of peaks and valleys to find it had fallen flat. Then she looked at Gia, still asleep at the end of the bed.

Rue’s first reaction wasn’t disbelief or shock or anguish, she only wanted to tell her mother not to wake Gia, to let her stay safe in her sleep for just a little longer. But paramedics were arriving and she was being ushered out of the room. She stood frozen in the hall as strangers moved in and out of the house, taking her dad away.

Slipping back to his room to retrieve his sweatshirt, she wrapped herself in it and hid in her room until the house went quiet and the flashing lights outside her window disappeared. Then, a sudden urgency possessed her and she ran back to her dad’s room where her mother and Gia sat, holding each other and crying. Rue climbed onto the bed to the spot where her dad had laid. She pressed her hands into the mattress, searching for any last bit of warmth his body might’ve left there, but it was cold. 

The cold seemed to travel up her fingertips and into the rest of her body, making her shiver. She pulled the red sweatshirt tighter around herself and sat there, numb. The sniffles and sobs from her mom and Gia sounded muffled to her ears. 

Rue wasn’t sure how long she sat there, unable to move. The sunlight beginning to stream through the window was the only marker of the passage of time.

It was a simple movement her mother made, reaching up toward the lamp on the bedside table that, made Rue break out of her stupor with a vengeance. 

“NO!” she shrieked, lunging forward to grab her mother’s hand. She couldn’t turn that lamp off. That lamp was on because her father had asked that it be turned on. 

“Rue?” her mother questioned, thoroughly startled. 

“Dad told me to turn it on,” she explained imploringly as tears finally began to fall. 

Leslie looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. 

— —

So the light stayed on, day and night. With a mountain of medical debt looming over them, they didn’t have the money for a casket or a nice tombstone but Leslie never once mentioned the strain on the electric bill. 

15 days after her dad’s death, Rue’s mom made her and Gia attend a weekly support group of sorts for kids dealing with loss. A lot of the kids there talked about Heaven, or Jesus, or about a better place, or how their loved one was watching over them now. Rue didn’t really understand those ideas. If there really was a “better place”, why shouldn’t she just go join her dad there now instead of wading through however many painful decades of life she had left? She also didn’t like the idea of her dad watching her, she thought that would make him sad. 

One boy in the group shared about his grandma that had recently died of lung cancer. His family believed that her soul would stay on Earth for 49 days after her death and during that time, they kept an altar of her favorite things in the house to honor her spirit as it prepared for its departure. That made Rue think of the lamp in her father’s room. Rue liked the idea of that better than the thought of her dad sitting on some distant cloud somewhere and watching her suffer without him. So that day when she got home, she gathered some of his possessions from around the house and arranged them on the bedside table under the soft glow of the lamp. His favorite book, a watch with a leather band, a family photograph in which she and Gia were young, round-faced children. 

Every day, she would sit by the table for awhile. Sometimes she would read one of the pages he had marked in the book or set a cup of coffee there for him. Other times she would just sit silently until the pain became so unbearable that her hand would reach automatically toward the drawer that used to contain his pills, before remembering that her mother had already disposed of them.

On the 43rd day after his death, she came home from school and the room was dark. At first, she felt panic. She ran to check that the cord was still plugged in. It was. With a shaking hand, she reached up and twisted the switch once. The room remained dark. The bulb was dead, and her dad was gone. But it hadn’t been 49 days yet! His soul wasn’t supposed to leave for another week. The horrible emptiness of the room pressed in on her from all sides and she started to suffocate. All the air was gone from the room and she gasped desperately. On shaky legs she jolted out of the room, down the hall, and through the living room out the back door. After the darkness of the room, the brilliant sunlight hurt her eyes as she took deep, gulping breaths of fresh fall air. The loss hit her all over again in waves of loneliness, confusion, and sadness. It wasn’t cold out but her body shuddered. The big oak tree in their yard must have felt sorry for her and offered a token of comfort by dropping one of its pretty orange leaves at her feet. And finally, she felt relief. Rue wasn’t sure where her dad’s soul was headed now, but it was enough to know that he was free. He didn’t have to spend one more day trapped in that room.

She wandered back into the house and to her own room, where she found an old shoebox under her bed. Walking back down the hall to her dad’s room, she slowly packed his belongings from the bedside table into the box. Finally, Rue carefully unscrewed the bulb from the lamp and laid it on top of the other items, then placed the box in her closet where it would be safe. 

— — —

Pain like this made Rue long for a depressive episode. If she couldn’t find drugs to numb the pain, depression was the next best thing. It was painful in it’s own way, but definitely preferable to the turmoil she was currently caught in. Her depression was like being 10 feet under water but her grief was like being on the surface and choking, muscles burning with the effort to keep her head above water. Unfortunately, although depression was a loyal companion of hers, that didn’t mean it came when called. Rue thought of herself as surrounded by dark figures that took turns tormenting her. If it wasn’t her mental illness it was her grief, and if it wasn’t the grief, it was her addiction. And sometimes it was all three at once. Again, Rue was reminded of how things would always be this way. 

There’s no cure for depression. That means once someone’s diagnosed, they can’t be _undiagnosed_. Rue’s hypothetical future children (which she fervently hoped would remain permanently hypothetical) would always have to answer “yes” to the question at doctors appointments about family history of mental illness. It’s the same with addiction. Once an addict, always an addict. A person can be 25 years sober but they’re still an addict. And grief, too. Grief never goes away, it never gets smaller and it doesn’t get easier, and it doesn’t just stay neatly packed away in a box until you decide to open it again. It compounds every painful moment because the one person whose shoulder you want to cry on, isn’t there. Essentially, the three worst parts of her life came with a life sentence and that overwhelming permanence was made all the more terrifying with the confirmation that the one good thing in her life couldn’t last forever. 

All good things must come to an end, she thought bitterly. But what about the bad things? Do they ever end? Why wasn’t there a dumb cliche about that? 

With no options left, Rue laid on her bed and did what the depression and the drugs had not allowed her to do for a long time. She cried. Not just tears of sadness, but the kind of crying that claims the whole body. She wept with deep, gut-wrenching sobs that made her breath stutter so much she thought she might suffocate. First she cried because she hated Jules, then she cried because she hated herself for thinking that, and then she cried because she loved Jules so much. 

She thought back to a couple of hours ago, when she had looked Nate Jacobs dead in the eye and threatened to give him a taste of his own medicine. She tried in vain to call back the feeling of absolute power that had possessed her in that moment but it was long gone. She hadn’t been bluffing when she confronted Nate, but that stone-cold confidence disintegrated when it came to Jules. Nate Jacobs didn’t have the power to ruin her life. But Jules did. 

She had to remind herself that Jules wasn’t gone forever. She’d just gotten on a train. She’d be back but for the first time since meeting her, the idea of seeing Jules again didn’t comfort Rue. The distance between them now wasn’t an eternal divide, but it felt somehow irreparable. Some sort of line had been crossed that they wouldn’t simply be able to step back over and forget. 

The feeling reminded Rue of the particularly bittersweet predicament of loving something so much, like a song or a movie, that she wanted to forget it just so she could experience it again for the first time. 

She thought about what her dad might tell her now if he were here. Maybe he would tell her that one single person can’t be your everything. Because that isn’t fair to you or them. Maybe he would tell her that isn’t love, to expect that of someone.

Rue cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. And then she cried for awhile longer after that. When the tears finally stopped, she laid still and took deep, shaking breaths and braced herself for more aftershocks. 

From somewhere in her mess of a room, her phone buzzed once…twice…then a third time. Rue didn’t move. 

What if it was Jules? 

What if it wasn’t? 

Both possibilities seemed to present equal risk of another emotional breakdown. Rue doubted her body would survive that. She knew that the longer she laid there, the more time her brain would have to convince her to look at the texts, so she lifted herself off her bed to evacuate the war-zone. 

Rue wandered down the hall to the bathroom and splashed some cool water on her tearstained face and looked up at herself in the mirror. She looked strung out, but in a different way than she was used to. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were bloodshot, encircled by purple bags underneath and red eyeshadow on top with residual sparkles on the lids. The longer she studied herself, the closer she felt to the person in the mirror. Underneath the overwhelming exhaustion, something else flickered within her and it took her several long moments to identify the feeling that hadn’t visited her in so long. Pride. Its presence was so fleeting she almost missed it. 

Once, when she was younger, she’d stared into her own eyes in the mirror for so long she began to dissociate until she no longer recognized her reflection. But the person in the mirror moved when she did which terrified her. She remembered being so frightened that she screamed for her mom but as soon as she heard her answering call, she was back in her body again, reminded of who she was. 

That dissociation started to happen more often as she got older, especially when her addiction began to take ahold of her. Sometimes it was a comfort, to look in the mirror and feel no connection whatsoever to the reflection looking back. It made her feel like she had achieved the elusive goal of escaping the trap that was her body. So she floated along, comfortable with that disconnect, until she met Jules. 

Jules had knocked her solidly back into her body, tethering Rue to her physical being. For the first time in so long, her heartbeat would quicken in a way that was very different from an anxiety attack. Her head would spin with no drugs in her system. Everything about Jules seemed so physical like the way she’d move her hands when talking or the way she showed affection with her overzealous hugs and kisses. The way she would run to Rue and almost tackle her to the ground after they’d been apart for 24 hours. The way she like to sleep wrapped up in Rue’s arms. And it seemed like everything she did had a direct effect on Rue’s body. But in that moment as she looked at herself in the mirror, she felt that her body didn’t belong to drugs, or Jules, or her anxiety or depression. It was _hers_. Just hers. She belonged to herself.

For the first time in a long time, she had ventured into the empty place in her heart where her father had once resided. What she found was that the absence of drugs she’d used to avoid that place hurt, but the absence of her dad hurt just a little more which sucked but it also meant she wasn’t totally lost yet. And neither was he. 

Painful as it was, it was a comfort to know that she still loved him more than she loved the drugs she used to cope with his loss. There was a small victory in that, just a tiny sliver of relief. And maybe that was enough for now, Rue thought. 

Starting to feel the weight of the last few hours, Rue turned her back on the mirror and started to move back toward her bedroom but stopped at Gia’s door which was slightly ajar. Gia used to wake her up in the night and climb into bed with her when she was scared or sad or lonely. But it had been so long since she’d done that. 

Pushing the door open, Rue slipped through and crept soundlessly over to the edge of her bed. Her sister was sleeping deeply, her face calm and relaxed. She looked younger like this with MooMoo, her favorite cow stuffed animal tucked under her chin. After studying her for a long moment, Rue sat down on the floor and leaned against the bed. The sky outside Gia’s window was just beginning to blush pink with morning light. 

Rue listened to the steady sound of her sister’s breathes and only after several minutes did she realize she hadn’t been automatically counting them. And there it was again, the tiny glimmer of pride, of hope. 

Rue started to feel her eyes get heavy as sleep beckoned her and she let them slip closed…

“Rue!”

She jolted upright, wincing at the stiffness in her neck. The room was considerably lighter now.

“Wha?” she groaned, confused, then spotted Gia sitting up with a look of panic on her face and a rush of guilt hit Rue like a ton of bricks. She had woken up to find Rue unconscious, slumped at the foot of her bed. 

“I’m fine G, I’m fine” she rushed to reassure her sister, kicking herself for not considering what Gia would assume, seeing Rue like that. She clambered up onto the bed to pull her into her arms as she promptly began shaking and crying. 

“Shhhhh, I’m okay,” Rue soothed her. “I’m so sorry, I just fell asleep, I’m alright.”

“Why didn’t you just get in bed with me?” Gia asked incredulously through her tears. 

“Didn’t wanna wake you. I’m sorry.” 

After a few moments, Gia was comforted. 

“How was the dance?” she finally asked.

Rue just closed her eyes and shook her head.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

Jules had definitely packed a charging cord, she _knew_ she did, but after rifling through her bag and coming up empty-handed, she realized it was in the other bag. The one that Rue had. And Rue was not on the train with her. 

She looked down at her phone, now at 7% battery.

Even if she had time to compose a message long enough to convey her regret, she knew nothing could be said in a text that would repair what she’d just done.

A man a few rows away had his phone plugged in and she was just considering going to ask if she could borrow it for a few minutes when he looked up and noticed her eyeing him and smiled at her in a way that made her skin crawl. 

She opened her text thread with Anna, then swiped back out of it and quickly typed a text to TC instead.

**on the train into the city. phones gonna die. can u pick me up at the station?**

Without waiting for a response, she turned her phone onto airplane mode to save what little battery she had left. With nothing to distract her, Jules’ mind spun with endless images of the possible ramifications of what just transpired for the duration of the train ride. 

Jules stared apprehensively out the window as the train pulled into the city. The thousands of tiny lights illuminating the towering buildings didn’t give her the same thrill it had last time. Was it really only a week ago that this place had felt like the world’s most magical escape? 

To her tremendous relief, TC was leaning against their car in the parking lot. They gave her a hug, then tossed her bag into the back while Jules climbed into the passenger seat. TC got in but didn’t immediately start the car.

“Hey, you okay?” they asked with a concerned frown at Jules’ conspicuous lack of her usual exuberance. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Jules answered and promptly burst into tears. “TC I think I really fucked up,” she cried. 

All the bullshit she’d worked so hard to avoid discussing last week came tumbling out.

TC took a long route through the city, giving Jules time to get everything off her chest as she told them about Nate and Tyler and Rue and finally, about the events that led to her arrival in the city.

“She was worried about her medication and I told her we’d figure it out but—what?” she asked when she saw TC wince slightly.

“Nothing, continue.”

“What?!” Jules demanded.

“Well, the old ‘we’ll figure it out’ trick doesn’t usually work for people with anxiety, or OCD, or….what else does this girl have going on?” 

“Fuck,” Jules lamented, burying her face in her hands. “I can’t believe I didn’t just fucking stay with her.”

“So why didn’t you?” 

Somehow, her friend had a knack for asking brutally tough questions in a kind and gentle way. 

“I think I thought that if I could just put all the pieces together, everything would be perfect.” 

“What do you mean?” TC pressed, confused. 

“Rue, Anna, the city,” Jules listed. 

“So you told her about Anna?” 

Jules nodded.

“And how’d that go?”

“I told her I’m in love with her, too. And then she asked me if I wished she was different.” 

Jules’ heart throbbed at the memory of Rue’s wide, uncertain eyes as she’d asked Jules that question that all people, at some point in their life, need to know the answer to: do you love me as I am? 

“And what’d you say?”

“I told her no. But…maybe I do,” she said slowly. 

“What do you wish was different about her?” TC prompted patiently.

Jules took a moment to think.

“I wish she didn’t have to use drugs to feel okay. Wish she could feel safe in her own head. And I guess I wish she didn’t need me. It’s not that I don’t want her to want me, I just don’t think I can handle the pressure of her needing me. Does that make me like…a really shitty person?”

TC shook their head.

“Loving someone doesn’t mean you don’t want them to be better. Actually, I think that’s all love is, really. You can love someone where they are and still want to see them grow. But it’s hard. Definitely not your typical high school sweetheart type shit.”

Jules sighed heavily. 

“I’m worried about her,’ she voiced, “everything means so much to Rue.” She thought about the way Rue analyzed every detail of everything, how hard it was for her to just exist. 

TC reached over and gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. They were now parked out front of the apartment building. 

“Is Anna here?” Jules asked. 

“Um no, she went out,” TC answered carefully. “Not sure if she’ll be back tonight.”

Jules felt strangely relieved that she wouldn’t have to face Anna’s intense gaze tonight, despite it being all she’d wanted just a few hours ago. 

“Where do you wanna crash?” TC asked once they were in the apartment. “We can fix up the couch for you or you could take Anna’s bed.”

Jules chewed her lip. It seemed a silly detail to fixate on, but it felt wrong to sleep in Anna’s bed with her heart and her mind full of Rue. 

“Couch?” TC asked, seeming to sense her inner dilemma and Jules nodded gratefully. 

She thanked TC for everything before they headed to sleep. 

With her phone plugged into a borrowed cord, she laid on the couch and sent a text to her dad letting him know where she was and that she’d be back tomorrow. She didn’t receive a reply and assumed he’d already gone to sleep. Her dad wasn’t the type of parent to wait up when she went out or pester her about her whereabouts. 

Her relationship with her dad was unique in that sense. It seemed that most other kids in the suburbs had parents that called every hour and quickly became upset if it went to voicemail. Rue’s mom was kind of like that, but she had a good reason to be, Jules supposed. Jules’ dad was pretty hands-off and treated her like an adult for the most part. The trust and respect was largely a product of the trauma they’d endured together. Everything Jules had gone through in her transition had required them to communicate and problem-solve a lot. And when her mom left, they had to lean on one another even more. 

It had taken Jules awhile after that to understand the differences between the way each of her parents loved her. 

Her mom loved her with an iron fist. The kind of love that suffocates a person and starves them of their right to be themselves in the name of keeping them safe. She remembered vividly the visceral feeling of betrayal that cut like a knife as she screamed for her mother and pounded desperately on the door of that psychiatric ward. It’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, she thought, the way society locks up people with mental illness and then says “see, I told you they’re crazy” when they violently demand to be let go. Jules could see now that she was older, the fear that had motivated so many of her mom’s actions. Her mom had been afraid of her gender expression, afraid that it would steal her child from her. But her dad saw that it was an inseparable part of her, so he wasn’t afraid of losing her when she transitioned. Her dad’s love was patient, calm, and dependable.

Jules wondered about how she loved Rue and how Rue loved her. 

A particular memory came to her mind then, of Rue telling her that there was literally nothing she could do to upset her. Jules hadn’t recognized it as such at the time, but that statement was essentially a declaration of unconditional love. On the other hand, her love for Rue was—and always had been—conditional. Explicitly so. From the moment she told her they couldn’t be friends if she didn’t get clean. It hadn’t been a shallow kind of ultimatum, but an act of self-preservation. She wasn’t going to die for Rue and she didn’t want Rue to die for her. That’s not love, she decided. Not their love, anyway.

Jules thought back to the night she met Rue, after she’d stood up to Nate and cut her arm open to demonstrate her invincibility. She thought about the precedent she might’ve unintentionally set in that moment when they talked casually for the first time as blood ran down her arm. What had she looked like through Rue’s eyes? She doubted Rue was conscious of it, but maybe she’d seen Jules as the indestructible force she had pretended to be. Maybe she saw someone who could save her.

But no one can save anyone who’s looking to be saved. She didn’t want Rue to depend on her, not necessarily because she herself wasn’t dependable, but because no one is. No one can be someone else’s reason to live. 

So with every sip of alcohol, Jules tried to distance herself from Rue’s sobriety, to detach herself from it. But Rue the addict could not be separated from Rue her best friend or the Rue she might be in love with. They were one in the same. She couldn’t cut one out of her life without losing the other.

After staring at the blinking cursor for god knows how long, Jules finally decided that the only thing shittier than apologizing over text would be to say nothing at all, so she sent three texts to Rue in quick succession.

**i’m sorry**  
**stay safe**  
**love you**

The lack of response kept her awake for another hour, her stomach in knots.

She had just begun to fall into a light sleep when the sound of keys in the door startled her awake and Anna was stumbling into the apartment and turning on the light.

“Jules, baby!” she exclaimed in surprise upon spotting her.

“Shhhhh,” Jules reminded her.

“Right, sorry,” Anna giggled as she sat down next to Jules, wrapping her arms around her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” 

“Um, it was last-minute,” she answered evasively. 

Anna was now mouthing at Jules’ neck. Her breath smelled like alcohol. All Jules could think was if this was how Rue had felt at the Halloween party. Because this didn’t feel good.

Then Anna was kissing her.

Jules felt none of the intense passion she had the last time. Instead, she felt her body instinctively go almost limp with passivity, the way it had been trained to do whenever one of her hookups with men got a little too rough or uncomfortable. She didn’t want to kiss Anna right now, but her first inclination wasn’t to say no, it was to forget herself and let her body be used. It took several moments for her to come back to herself, to realize that she could say no to Anna. 

Jules carefully pulled back from the kiss. 

“What’s wrong?”

After thoroughly dissecting everything with TC, Jules didn’t have it in her to get into it with Anna. Certainly not a very intoxicated Anna. 

“Nothing I’m…tired,” she finished lamely.

“Well come sleep in my bed,” Anna insisted and Jules let herself be pulled to Anna’s room. 

As she laid next to Anna, she felt the same emptiness she’d felt the morning after their hookup. And that’s when it occurred to her that maybe she wasn’t in love with Anna, she was in love with what Anna represented. A life free from the claustrophobic suburbs in a world big enough to get lost in. An image of what Rue might one day be, free from her demons.

Jules waited until Anna fell asleep, then quietly slipped back to the couch.

— — 

Her dad was reading at the kitchen table when she arrived home the next morning. He didn’t yell at her for taking off or ground her, he just enveloped her in a warm hug. His respect of her personal life was something Jules valued a lot in their relationship but right now, she needed to be a kid again and tell him she didn’t know what to do. So she did. 

“Well Julesy,” he said, using his old pet name for her after she told him an abbreviated version of the previous night’s events, “I don’t think you need me to tell you what you need to do.”

“Dad, I can’t. I have no idea what I would say to her.” 

“Well, its your choice,” he said kindly, but Jules could see a flicker of something in his eyes that she almost never saw there: disappointment. 

“I’m gonna go shower,” she mumbled, needing space to think things over. 

“Love you,” he told her as she climbed the stairs wearily. 

“Love you too,” she sighed. 

How was she even supposed to face Rue now? And how could she not? 

She found the answer she needed draped over the back of her desk chair when she entered her room. Rue’s beloved red sweatshirt. The one she seemed to disappear into when she got nervous. The one she wore even in 80 degree weather. The one that seemed to be a part of her in a way that made it more than just an article of clothing.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

[Verse 1]  
There was a time, dark and divine  
Exciting and new, shameful and true  
Free to explore, we had it all  
Towering trust, insatiable lust  
Clouding the truth, both of us knew  
This sordid affair, is ending in tears  
Yet we would go on, knowing the wrong  
Until the day, it was taken away

[Bridge]  
Oh all our love  
Fell down to Earth  
Here broken and cold  
With great remorse

[Verse 2]  
But for a while it all made sense  
It might have been just a dark pretense  
But you had me, and I loved it  
To be with you, to be the one  
To live a lie, it really got me all excited  
I felt wanted

[Verse 3]  
Then in the night, the sorrow inside  
Was taken away, deliverance came  
Fell from the sky, Heaven replied  
Salvation in streams, silent and clean  
Yes, all that we were, all that we knew  
Is fading away, like tears in the rain  
All that we were, all that we knew  
Fading away

[Outro]  
All that we were, all that we knew  
Fading away  
All that we were, all that we knew  
Fading away  
All that we were, all that we knew  
Fading away  
All that we were, all that we knew  
Fading away...

**Author's Note:**

> This is a disgustingly long rant but that’s okay because no one reads the notes anyway. Like I could probably write an entire dissertation on this. I was listening to one of my favorite songs awhile ago when it hit me: Sam Levinson wrote the season one Rules relationship arc based on this song and I’m pretty sure no one can convince me otherwise. Seriously, I was going full Detective Bennett on this shit, complete with a phone call to my mother to tell her I’m a fucking genius and this video compilation thing is the result of that. 
> 
> First of all, the production on this song is brilliant. The album is titled The Inevitable End and I think this track really encapsulates that perfectly. It starts off with this dark, running foundation that spans the entire song that has this seductive, compelling thing about it that draws you in and then there’s this pretty, twinkly melody laid over the top. Like that is Rules in a nutshell if you ask me. Basically the production speaks for itself, but the lyrics really seal the deal. Royksopp describes the song as a reflection on “the difficulties of letting go of emotional attachments – even those of a questionable nature…” And the aesthetics of the show just go with the song so well I think. 
> 
> Euphoria also does such a great job of showing the complexities of love. I think movies, books, etc, often perpetuate the notion that a relationship has to last forever in order to be meaningful and that romantic love is the most intimate and valuable form of love but I think Rue and Jules really transcend those expectations. I’m not saying I think their love is doomed, but I do think there is something so beautiful about two people knowing they’re not quite right for each other, knowing a painful separation is coming, but loving one another anyway. 
> 
> Okay I’m done now, but I'd love to have some Euphoria pals so my twitter is @madmorr7 if anyone wants to talk about Rue with me :)


End file.
